


Dolls

by Aaskada



Category: Original Work, Vaselisa the Beautiful (Russian Fairy Tales-Norbert Guterman)
Genre: Crack, Gen, Hallucinations, Magic, Minor Character Death, Non-Linear Narrative, Off-screen Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 16:31:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaskada/pseuds/Aaskada
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifty-five ways "Vaselisa the Beautiful" could have happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dolls

I

“Take care of her and she will take care of you.”

Maria smoothed down the satiny brown hair piled on top of the dolls head. The doll was porcelain with a green taffeta dress and matching bonnet and silk slippers and shawls. She couldn't tell what it's brown hair was made of, but it was soft and smooth and tied up in braids beneath the bonnet with fringe hanging across its forehead. The mouth opened like a nutcracker's and there was an indentation inside.

“Just a little bit of food, right there.”

She stood and walked to the kitchen; she could use some advice.

II

Her mother had told her to feed the doll, but it was just a doll, wasn't it? Staring at the tiny thing coming trying to climb she was finally starting to believe. It couldn't climb the table, but she couldn't stay on it forever. Mentally she amended “feed the doll” to “feed the doll or it will try to eat you.”

She picked a peanut out of the bowl on the table and dropped it on the floor. For a moment the doll was completely still and then it picked up  
the peanut and ate it before trying to climb the table legs again.

“Fantastic,” she muttered. “Maybe if I give it enough peanuts it'll leave me alone.”

III

The doll was an unassuming thing, raggedy, when she dug it out of the back of the closet. She had never seen it before, but it had to have been her mother's, since her father had his own closet to use. It had a mouth like a nutcracker and she took it with her to the kitchen to amused herself trying to crack open hazelnuts.

IV

"Mom?" Lena looked into her mother's office to see her hunched over her desk. There was a doll in her hands that her attention was completely focused on. She was never entirely sure what happened next, but when the police questioned her she would swear that the doll had killed her mother.

V

"it's a doll," Miranda said.

"My mom said if I fed it, it would tell me what to do. I tried it; it worked."

"Yeah. Right."

Alice put an M&M in the dolls mouth and closed it, but nothing happened. She checked to see if the candy was still there. It was.

VI

Elizabeth tried to shove the stuffing back inside the doll as if it could fix the ripped off limbs and tears from where her cousin's dog had used it as a chew toy.

VII

"Dad! Have you seen the doll mom gave me?"

"No. Where did you put it?"

"I don't remember. I can't find it anywhere."

VIII

Nothing in the house seemed disturbed beside the broken lock and open door when Christa got home to find her house burglarized. The police showed up an hour later and walked through the house with her while she tried to figure out if anything was missing. The only thing that was gone was the doll her mother had given her years ago.

"It looks like they got what they came for. Is there any particular reason they might've wanted the doll?"

"It's been in the family for generations, so I suppose it must be worth something by now. There was a story that it could give you advice if you fed it, but, well, that's a story."

"We'll tell you if we find anything."

IX

They both died of brain cancer within a few days of each other. At that point they had been practically comatose for a few months and she had been living with her aunt and uncle and their cats in a different state, but it was still strange to go to her parents' funeral and know that she'd never see them again. Everything they owned had been left to her, though most of it would be liquidated unless she decided otherwise. The only thing she decided to keep was her mother's antique doll collection.

X

The teddy bear was a bit ratty from being dragged around behind a child; from being slept on, chewed on, and squished. Laura cried every time she looked at it, and Eric eventually decided to hide it in the boxes with the rest of their daughter's things. Laura would dig it out around the anniversary of Irena's death, like usual, and the process would start again, but for now it would be the best he could do.

XI

There was always an indefinable sense of loss after asking the doll for advice. What was being lost she wasn't sure, but every time she used the doll it took something from her. Maybe that was what had happened to her mother. People always said she had been a shell of herself at death. It was kind of a ridiculous statement because, hey, according to the uber-religious maniacs in her family the body was a shell for the soul anyway and didn't that make them shells of themselves for their entire lives? She knew what they meant, probably better than they knew because of the feeling the doll gave her.

XII

"Thank you for the doll."

"What are you talking about, sweetie?"

"The doll you gave me at lunch yesterday."

"I didn't give you anything, honey," she said, concerned. "I was at the convention all day."

XIII

"Mom? What is it?"

"A doll, sweetie," the thing that looked like her mother said.

XIV

"Can you show me?"

"No, Jessie, it's yours now. I can't use it anymore."

"Why?"

"That's just how it works. You can't use it once it becomes someone else's."

Jessica hugged the doll to her chest and stared wide-eyed at her mother.

"Take good care of her."

She nodded solemnly and crawled off the bed to find a good place to keep the doll.

XV

Andrea picked up the doll. It was one of those new cybernetic things that the FDA had finally approved; it would hook up to your subconscious and give you advice based on whatever it found there. There was a warning label taking up half of one side panel that said the company wasn't responsible for whatever the doll got from the user's mind.

XVI

Michaela looked at the doll.

"One of those weird telepathic dolls?"

"It's not telepathy, but yeah."

"Freaky."

"Andrew got one of them and then got sent to juvie for trying to rob the Chevron."

XVII

Jorge, Alyssa, and Daniel could all get the doll to work just fine, but Roger and Nora couldn't. It didn't matter what they did: the doll wouldn't talk to them like it would the others.

XVIII

The problem with the little kabuki doll was that all the advice it gave was obsolete and entirely not useful everywhere that wasn't pre-imperialism Japan. For starters, the doll only spoke in Japanese. When she found someone to translate Giovanna found out it was always telling her to pray at the local shinto temples. There weren't any local shinto temples.

XIX

The doll had given her mother foolproof advice, had defended her grandmother from assault, and helped her great grandmother become a well-off woman. It seemed that Aaliyah was getting a much less useful stream of constant fashion advice.

XX

"Jordan? Jordan!"

Jordan was panicking just as much as her mother was. The doll activated latent abilities, like the X-Men, and it seemed that she had the unfortunate ability to stay constantly out of phase with the rest of the world. She fell through the wall when she tried to lean against it and then decided to try and turn back. She had dropped the doll when she shifted, so it couldn't help her.

She never did manage it.

XXI

"So you can see the future now?" Alexis asked.

"Yeah," Madison confirmed. "About five minutes.

"Cool. How's it work?"

"I don't really know." Madison shrugged. "It seems to just happen when I need to know something."

"That's convenient."

XXII

As soon as Andrew picked up the doll flames erupted around him, setting the living room on fire. When everyone was outside he dropped the doll on the pavement and the fire around him immediately went out, leaving the house burning.

"I think someone else can pick that up."

XXIII

"What do you get?"

"Invisibility."

"Fantastic, I get incorporeality."

They were already handcuffed together so they each took a hold of the tiny charm that would activate their powers and focused on extending their ability to each other so they could escape and report back to their CO.

XXIV

A week after her father died in a hit and run, Hanna's mother hung herself from the attic rafters. She got shuffled into the foster system because no one in her extended family wanted her and she was fifteen and too old to have a good chance at adoption.

The first home she went to was already full to bursting. The family had three of their own children and were fostering another four beside her. She was the oldest there and had to spend most of her time babysitting. It didn't last long: they decided they couldn't handle so many children and she was sent away with two of the others.

She was the only child at the second home, which was with two ex-military officers in their late fifties. They had a schedule so rigid it would shatter if you dropped it and she had be neater than anywhere else she'd ever been. She got sent back when the husband died of a heart attack a year later.

The third person to take her in was a single woman. She was the owner of a new age magic store and told fortunes in the back room. They celebrated the solstice instead of Christmas and Hanna got a hand-stitched doll that smelled like rosemary and jasmine. She stayed with the woman long enough to graduate highschool and worked in the store every summer, saving enough money to pay her way through the state university with a scholarship. When she left, she took the doll with her.

XXV

Sydney looked at the doll she had found hidden in the back of her mother's closet. It was a rabbit with soft fur and a purple ribbon around its neck, but didn't seem otherwise special. She ignored it and moved on to trying to find the box her mother asked her to get.

XXVI

Chloe huddled behind a dumpster in the alley and stared miserably at the doll in her hands. It was damp and her jeans had soaked through a while ago. Her jacket was waterproof, but it wasn't helping keep her warm against the freezing water and the cold cement. Things hadn't been the same after her mother died, but she had hoped it would get better. Now she was stuck without food for herself, let alone to give the doll for advice.

XXVII

"Hey, look." Alexandra held a doll aloft. "I found it in the attic."

"Huh. The previous owners must have left it there. I wonder why."

XXVIII

"Hey, dad, was this mom's?"

Richard Gallagher looked at the doll his daughter was holding up. He frowned.

"It doesn't look familiar. Where did you find that?"

"It was in the boxes." She shrugged. "Like everything else."

XXIX

It belonged to your grandmother, she had said. She had forgotten to mention that the doll was haunted by the woman. On one hand Beth Greene had always given the best advice, on the other hand Beth Greene had been more than a little bit crazy.

"Don't nobody matter but you, girl!"

"Grandma, please stop."

XXX

"Look, I don't know, but just get rid of the thing, okay? I looked it up. The doll gives pretty good advice, but that hasn't stopped all its previous owners from dying horrible deaths."

"You're being paranoid."

Kyra wasn't surprised to being going to Taylor's funeral a few months later.

XXXI

Brianna threw the doll across the room and watched it smack off the wall to land on the floor. It gave advice, sure, but its advice was something that should never be followed; it was like those comedy routines _the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly_ where you got purposefully bad advice as a joke, except the doll didn't give good advice with that.

XXXII

Gabrielle had learned to be careful about what she fed the doll. Velveeta cheese tended to get pretty bad advice, but one time she had given it a slice of red velvet cake from an artisan and gotten stock market tips that had helped her get money for college. It was a matter of deciding how much help she really needed and getting food of the right quality to get the help she wanted. After two years she had it down almost to an art. There was a chart she had put together of what foods yielded decent advice and which ones didn't.

XXXIII

Hayley looked at the box in her lap.

"Uh, I haven't forgotten some important date, have I?"

"No, your fine. Open it." Nella waved at her impatiently. "You'll like it."

XXXIV

No one knew who got who for the Secret Santa exchange at the office. That was the entire point of drawing names, of course, but most of the time people could figure out who had drawn their name. Looking at the delicate porcelain doll in her hands that seemed handmade, Carrie could honestly say she had no idea who had given it to her.

XXXV

"It doesn't work anymore?"

"It needs an extra power source, like batteries or something. I don't know."

Kara and Leon both inspected the doll for any sign of how the doll was supposed to get this extra power source or what to use, but couldn't find anything. Leon suggested feeding it batteries. Kara stood up to get some from the kitchen and came back with three different sizes. She laid them out on the carpeted floor.

"The small ones will probably work best." She held up a triple-A battery. "We can see if she'll eat them."

XXXVI

People forget things over time and facts get left out. This was turning out to be a serious problem when it came to the little doll that she was learning about mostly through trial and error. Just about everything about it had been forgotten over the generations it was handed down until it got to her with the statement "food for advice."

XXXVII

Jade had gotten "that's all you need to know, everything else is just stories" whenever she asked her mother about the doll. She was pretty sure whatever her mother hadn't told her had been more than just stories, but there wasn't anyone she could ask anymore and the information she should have gotten would have been helpful a few months ago.

XXXVII

"Your mother should have told you all of this when she gave you the doll," the woman said imperiously.

Angel scowled. "She didn't exactly get the change. I got the doll in her will."

XXXVIII

Alexandra looked at the doll just out of her reach. She had trail mix she could feed it, but if she stood up to get it the men she was hiding from would see her.

XXXIX

"Thirty uses, Ainsley," her mother said. "Don't waste them."

XL

"What should I get Tina for her birthday?"

"Who should I ask to the dance?"

"Is it worth taking that test in English?"

"Which shoes should I get?"

"Should I go to the mall this weekend?"

"Should I date John or Howard?"

By the time she had something important to ask the doll, it had stopped working for her.

XLI

Michael looked at the doll blankly. Then he looked up at his mother, who was smiling at him serenely in her hospital bed.

"You're giving me a doll."

XLII

"I wonder if it actually does anything."

"Probably. Put the fake food in its mouth and it spits back some preprogrammed phrase."

Leah turned the box over to read the back.

"I don't think so: it doesn't say anything about batteries."

XLIII

The computer chip said "Situational Advice Learning Logarithm by Yates Inc./SALLY" on it in bold letters, white against the black plastic. Natalie pushed it into the little AI slot on her computer and waited for the program to load. It was fast: a few seconds later a graphic of a patchwork doll showed up in one corner of the screen. Below that there was a little box to type in questions and feedback. It worked something like a figure-eight ball, as far as she knew. Except that the program was a learning AI that would try to provide useful advice. This one had belonged to her mother, meaning it's protocols were advanced enough from previous use that it would be almost like asking an actual person for advice.

XLIV

“Give it some food and it will tell you how to solve all your problems!”

Lydia smiled indulgently at her mother. She knew better than to say anything, the woman tended to forget that she wasn't a child anymore. Sometimes she mistook her granddaughter, Kristina, for Lydia or her grandson, Joshua, for her long-dead son. Of course, naming Joshua after his dead uncle didn't help with the confusion much.

“It's a beautiful doll, mother,” Lydia said.

“Here you go.” The doll was placed in her lap and the older woman patted her hand. “Where has your father gotten off to?”

“He went out to the store.” To be honest the man had been dead for nearly a decade. “I'm sure you'll see him soon.”

XLV

“Just humor her.” That was what they had always said to people about Angela's mother. “Just humor her.” She had some kind of condition, but no one was ever sure what it was. The doctors that she had been taken to see could never figure it out, though one psychologist suggested that it might be schizophrenia and prescribed some type of pills for her to take. She overdosed one day after mumbling something about the doll she always carried around—the one she thought the rest of them didn't know about.

Angela took the doll after the funeral and put it on her nightstand. That night she had odd dreams. In the morning she was mumbling about dolls.

XLVI

Amanda turned the doll over in her hands.

"Are you sure?" her grandmother asked with a frown.

"Yes. It hasn't done anything."

"It seems I must have a talk with your mother."

XLVII

“All rivers need springs.”

Rebecca stared at the doll blankly for a moment, then gave it some more food.

“For success, look first to yourself.”

“Are you supposed to be a fortune cookie?”

XLVIII

"I think by chem teacher hates me. What should I do?"

"Kill him."

"No! What's wrong with you?"

XLIX

"You can use it only thirty times," her mother had said weakly. "Be careful with it."

This is just what she got for not listening, isn't it? "You can only use it thirty times" had meant exactly that: her mother had died shortly after her thirtieth use and now she was dying before she could even graduate from high school because she hadn't taken the warning seriously enough.

L

Anna gave the doll in her limp hands as dirty a look as she could manage. It was a few days before her fortieth birthday, she was nearly the same age as her mother had been and her mother before her. The whole thing made sense now, the history of early deaths in the women in her family. She had her own daughter now who sat by her deathbed looking curiously at the doll.

"This doll is a terrible thing, Maria," she told the girl. "It will give you the most perfect advice if you feed it, but one day it will demand your life for its services."

LI

"Hazelnuts? I hate hazelnuts, they taste terrible."

"You're a doll!" Leah was incredulous. "You don't even have tastebuds."

"Well, then, they must be absolutely awful if I can tell how bad they taste."

"Don't you ever go back to sleep? I don't need any help right now."

The doll sniffed and flopped down on her cheap IKEA desk, clearly ignoring her.

"If I had known you were going to be so difficult...."

LII

The doll in her hands didn't look like anything special, just a ragdoll with and actual mouth that could be opened. Nia's mother had told her stories and kept it by her bedside for years, sometimes asking its wisdom. She could remember her wonder when the doll first spoke in front of her; the doll had stood up on its flimsy limbs and told her mother exactly what to do. Now, with the doll in her hands and her mother dead, she didn't know what to do.

She tried to feed the doll, but it wouldn't eat anything or talk to her no matter what she gave it.

LIII

It took a month for her mother's death to be ruled suicide and another week for her mother's possessions to be returned to the family. Leanne Richter had been found with her throat slit and a doll covered with her blood. According to the bewildered investigators she had held the doll against her neck while she bled, resulting in the now-brownish stain on the front of the doll's face. For some strange reason the inside of the dolls mouth looked as if it had been cleaned.

LIV

The door slammed open with no warning as Lilly ran into her parents bedroom and crawled under the bed. There were plenty of things stored under the bed for her to hide behind. Her parents' voices were still in the other room shouting threats at the person who had broken into their home during dinnertime. She pulled to cardboard boxes and plastic bags around her as if it could protect her from that person.

Her mother's voice cut off suddenly with a wet gurgle and her father screamed in rage and anguish. Lilly shook with sobs she tried to silence. Underneath her parents bed she hugged a doll to her chest, which her mother had pushed into her hands as she told her to run.

LV

“Happy birthday,” Amelia said while shoving a box into Cristina's hands. The box was plain cardboard with no markings. “Open it!”

Inside was a doll, hand-sewn with a cross-stitched face and yarn for hair.

“My grams taught me how to make them,” she said. “They're supposed to be good luck charms. They're stuffed with lavender and mint.”

“It smells really good,” Cristina said with the doll up to her face.


End file.
